Twenty Six Rockets
by Moe Machina
Summary: Cid and Shera devise and revise their means of escape.


**I.**

The rocket resisted coupling. He tried to pop a plastic panel into place, but the cheap toy balked both delicate adjustments and blunt pressure. He whispered a running incantation of profanity.

He could hear voices and footsteps upstairs, but the basement door remained closed. He did not know if the priest had left.

The decals kept peeling off. After gluing together a broken fin, he doubted the rocket's future space-worthiness, but his mother had promised it would fly.

Above him rose a funereal wail, keening and hopeless.

The panel was supposed to snap onto the rocket. Instead, it simply snapped.

**II.**

She found the diagram on a folded sheet inside _On the Efficacy of Mako-Powered Generators_ and recognized her father's illegible hand.

"Oh, that," her father said when she showed him. "A brief phase I went through in college. The dangerous combination of applied mathematics and idealism, you know."

Shera did not know. She was six. "But what is it?"

"Oh," he said. "Just a space ship."

"Does it work?"

He snorted. "It would probably fly, if that's what you mean. But I wanted an ark. As if we could be saved through escape." He blew out a stream of smoke.

**III.**

The Department of Family wanted to write Cid off as a textbook delinquent. The smoking? Check. The drinking? Check. The petty robbery? Unproven but suspected. He fit a typical and unpromising template.

Which is why Cid's test scores were so alarming. His reasoning skills? Non-existent. His vocabulary? Impressive only for its obscenity. His psychological profile? Somewhere near "clinical psychopath."

His math scores? Phenomenal.

So the Department was relieved when the Company came calling. It was a guilt-free chance to foist off their filthy-mouthed genius/savant.

Cid just wanted to blow things up. The Company assured him things would explode magnificently.

**IV.**

Her father was coughing when she came home. Shera hung up her coat, put away her school books, and went to start dinner.

"You're late," he said.

"I had to run by the library," she said. "Do you feel like carrots tonight?"

Wincing with pain, he levered himself into a sitting position on the sofa. "Carrots again?"

"I can put them in a casserole..." Shera said thoughtfully.

"Are you wearing lipstick?" he asked.

"No," Shera said, opening a drawer.

He coughed again, helplessly and furiously, and said, "You're looking more like your mother every day." It was not a compliment.

**V.**

Cid passed pilot school through a combination of skill, luck, and guile. He spent nights memorizing calculus formulae and design schematics. He sabotaged his classmates in little ways. He slept with one of his instructors.

And he flew. There were some bad times on the ground, such as when it was four in the morning and he was chain-smoking over the smudged ditto sheets that he had stolen from his examiner's office. But there were no bad times in the air.

The sky was endless and clean. His teeth rattling from the cold and the caffeine, Cid thought: _I'm home_.

**VI.**

Shera was the first to finish, even though she had taken her time on the exam. Each problem was a knot to be carefully untangled; each penciled equation was a step toward solving the snarl. Shera smiled and went through her answers again.

Afterwards, someone said, "Well, that was a bitch. Are you coming to the party tonight, Shera?"

Shera blinked owlishly. "No," she said at last. "I can't. Sorry."

"Oh," someone said uncomfortably. "We heard about your dad. That's rough."

Shera nodded. She did not explain that, regardless of her father's health, she was not allowed to attend parties.

**VII.**

In that overblown slapfight named the First Wutai War, Cid nearly died a dozen times. Every time he blew up an enemy fortification, he could hear the hum of his impending death.

But each time he nearly mastered the tune, his idiot instincts triumphed over his best intentions. He would pull out of the dive or evade the missile, and he would find himself safe, whole, and weeping.

He stopped sleeping at night. The company started giving him medals. The other pilots began touching him in passing, as if he were a lucky rabbit's foot.

Cid cackled at the thought.

**VIII.**

Shera first saw Cid on the flickering television in her father's hospital room. In between grimy shots of burning villages and glamour photographs of Captain Sephiroth, a pilot appeared in his cockpit long enough to flip off the camera.

"You're not going," her father croaked from beneath his apparatus of breathing tubes.

On screen, the pilot reappeared and lunged for the camera. The screen filled with snow.

"You can't go to university," her father said, "because you have to take care of me when I go home."

Shera looked at him, buried under bright machines.

"I know, Father," she lied.

**IX.**

"So," says the Company president.

"So," Cid says, tapping an unlit cigarette against his palm.

"We appreciate what you've done for us in Wutai," the president says.

"Blowing up orphanages and hospitals? Hell, it was nothing."

The president does not blink. "And we have an exciting new opportunity in the Company to offer you. The Company is beginning a new department."

"Oh, yeah? I thought you guys already had a finger in every pie. What else is there?"

The president spreads his arms wide. "Space."

The cigarette pauses; the fingers tremble. "Yeah? Do I get to hire my own people?"

**X.**

Shera saw Cid for the second time on the broken monitor that her college roommate used for soap operas. Shera was cramming for a fluids exam. Her father had been dead a year.

Someone was interviewing the new head of the Company's space program. The interviewer was a woman in a string of pearls. The decorated war hero was wearing a stained T-shirt and week-old stubble.

"So, why do you like space?" the interviewer asked cheerfully.

"Seriously? Is that really your first fucking question--" he said before everything went black and PLEASE STAND BY began to scroll across the screen.

**XI.**

Rockets one through three were really just models. Full-sized models, to be sure; models that were filled to the brim with circuitry. But in the end: just models.

"We learned valuable experimental data from their construction," the head engineer insisted.

"Fine," Cid said. "But they're still goddamn models. They were never intended to go into goddamn space, therefore they are not rockets. Ipso fucking facto."

"Should we fire them from catapults?" the engineer asked sourly. "As long as they left the ground, would they meet your criterion?"

"Yeah," Cid said, regarding him narrowly. "You get started on those catapults, cowboy."

**XII.**

Shera saw Cid for the third time in the Company's employee lounge.

"Is that the manual for new employees?" asked a disheveled man holding a cigarette.

"Yes, sir," she squeaked. "I'm waiting for my supervisor."

"Fuck it," he said.

"...sir?"

"Fuck the manual. It's nonsense. There's just two things you need to know: don't argue with your boss and watch out for falling debris." He took a drag on his cigarette. "You're Shera, right?"

She nodded.

"Then I'm your boss. Pleasure to meet you and all that. Be at the heliport in an hour, 'cause we're leaving for Rocket Town."

**XIII.**

The next five rockets were mixed successes. On one hand, the explosions were magnificent. On the other hand, the explosions did not always propel the rocket in the intended direction.

"Perhaps we should simplify things..." the head engineer started.

"No more damn models," Cid said. "What have you got the new kid doing?"

"What kid?"

"The new kid. The one the company hired behind my back. The one with the woo-woo test scores."

"Oh, her," the engineer said. "I thought she could take dictation."

"Fuck that. Put her on ignitions. Let's see if she can manage to blow things _up_."

**XIV.**

Shera liked Rocket Town. The other engineers may have been eccentric and territorial, but they were rarely unkind.

Most of all, Shera liked the work. She liked staying up all night working on designs; she liked testing those designs on the scorched launchpad. She even liked watching those test rockets fail, because by then she had already half-developed a better design.

She liked Cid too. She liked his stubble, his shirts, his cigarettes. She knew that he thought of her only as "the new kid" or as one of his engineering appendages. That was fine, she thought. That was enough.

**XV.**

Rockets nine through sixteen did various things inconsistently, but Rocket no. 17 worked like a charm.

Rocket Town got very drunk that night. Cid woke up the next morning in a ditch without his pants.

Trudging home and brushing leaves from his hair, he found Shera on his stoop with a notepad.

"What's up, kid?" he growled. He could feel his legs goose-pimpling in the cold.

"Good morning, sir," she said sunnily. "I think I've found a way to improve the fuel efficiency of yesterday's rocket."

He had to laugh.

Rockets eighteen through twenty-two went back to doing various things inconsistently.

**XVI.**

"Are you an idiot, kid?"

The question was rhetorical, so Shera did not answer it. Instead, she stared at the floor, cycling through stubborn and anguished thoughts.

"And now I've got the Company breathing down my neck while you fucking clowns fuck around. Why can't we use the design from seventeen? That flew, right? That was our goal, right?"

"Seventeen had problems," she whispered, not looking up. "It wasn't safe. There were re-entry risks. We're making a better design."

"Fuck that," she heard him say, followed by the sound of his footsteps receding. The door slammed.

Shera bit her lip.

**XVII.**

They watched Rocket no. 23 lift off.

"It went up, kid."

"Yes, sir."

"Nothing fucked up."

"No, sir."

"We're getting the right readings from the sensors."

"Yes, sir."

He nodded. "So what's next? Sending a guy up?"

Shera choked. "Are you kidding, sir? We have to keep running tests, sending up prototypes--we won't be ready for manned spaceflight for months."

He snorted. "Are you arguing with your boss, Shera? Because it sounds like you're arguing."

Shera was looking up.

"There's just two things you need to know--" Cid started.

On cue, a detached booster belatedly hit the ground beside them.

**XVIII.**

Rocket no. 24 worked.

Shera brought Cid a cup of tea, unasked. He was filling out Company paperwork; she was running probability scenarios on Rocket Town's ancient mainframe computer, which crashed whenever it processed particularly catastrophic events. It was two in the morning, and the crickets were chorusing outside the open window. Shera felt tired, grimy, and perfectly happy.

"Next," Cid said, cradling his paper cup, "we need to send up a dog."

Shera started. "I'm not sure we've worked out all the kinks in the re-entry procedure."

"Not necessarily a dog we fucking like," Cid said. "Just a goddamn dog."

**XIX.**

Somehow, they found a dog. He was a friendly, cock-eared mutt named Nero. Nero ecstatically licked the face of everyone he met.

They strapped Nero into the cockpit of no. 25. The other engineers were stoic, but Cid saw Shera, rather pale, scribbling on a pad. He knew she was calculating the dog's odds of survival. He knew the odds weren't good. The mainframe computer had gone down spectacularly that morning while running Nero's numbers.

He watched the dog greedily. _You lucky bastard_.

Rocket no. 25 worked. The dog ate half the celebratory cake that afternoon. The company called Cid that night.

**XX.**

"But why you, sir?"

"Can't be helped. The company wants to see a return on their fucking investment. They're pretty firm." Cid shrugged. "Besides, I want to. Why not?"

The stars were bright and cold overhead, and Cid was standing uncomfortably close to her. She could smell his aftershave.

"The odds aren't good, sir."

"What were the dog's odds?"

"Forty percent."

"Good enough," he said, laughing.

Shera recognized the helpless adoration and longing in Cid's expression when he turned his head to watch the sky. It was the same expression she felt on her face whenever she looked at him.

**XXI.**

It's not that he doesn't like the kid, Cid thinks, watching her frown at print-outs in the sunlight. She's sweet, and she's obviously sweet on him. It's cute, in a way. It's also heavy.

"The oxygen tank--" she starts.

"Can we fix it in twenty-four hours, Shera? Because we're launching in twenty-four hours."

She makes a face. "Probably."

Cid feels a delicious expectation. There are no bad times in the air, and the stars are clean and cold.

It's not that he plans to die. He's just tired of living on the ground with each fucking weight pulling him down.

**XXII.**

Shera feels like a broken record: _the oxygen tank the oxygen tank the oxygen tank_.

Drunk with exhaustion and anticipation, they tell each other their histories in the early-morning hours. She dreamed last night of her father's lonely spaceship design. He thinks of his mother as a star, waiting above them. She likes green-tea ice cream; he enjoys detective novels.

At some point later, Cid is kissing Shera, his stubble rasping across her throat, and Shera is thinking, _This is fine, this is enough_, even though it's not, because Shera has untapped reservoirs of greed.

The oxygen tank.

**XXIII.**

Cid woke up with his head on a desk and computer schematics smeared into his cheek. He vaguely remembered running final rocket tests and making out with the kid. She was gone.

He washed his face and put on a clean shirt. On the launchpad, engineers helped him into his spacesuit and Cid sadly lit his last cigarette. No smoking in space: his sole regret.

He saw Shera and waved, but she did not see him. He smiled benevolently upon the engineers clustered around him.

Soon he would be in space. He could not ask for more.

**XXIV.**

Shera woke up knowing what she was going to do. She woke with her chest full of the decision, a feeling as heavy and as hard as love.

She saw Cid in his spacesuit and looked away. She knew how much space meant to him. She knew that he thought of her only as "the new kid." She knew he would not stop the flight for her. She could not blame him.

She climbed into the twenty-sixth rocket and descended the ladder. If she could only help him achieve his dream, she could not ask for more.

It was enough.

**XV.**

After the No. 26 incident, the collected testimony from the witness engineers was suspiciously vague. The only clear record of the malfunction emerged, much later, when the Company received the partial log from the rocket's recovered communication system.

"An emergency situation...crackle...engine section of the rocket."

"It's Shera, Captain. Don't mind me, go ahead with the launch."

Static and unintelligible profanity. "You're gonna be burnt to a crisp! You're gonna die!"

"I don't mind. If I can just fix this--" Distortion. Popping noises.

Static. "Goddammit, Shera! You wanna make me a murderer?"

"15 seconds until ignition. Internal temperature rising."

"Shit. Shit!"

**XVI.**

Cid wrenched open the cockpit door and tripped across metal scaffolding, which had crumpled around the rocket as it lurched sideways.

He staggered down the scaffolding. With each step, he felt the groaning framework shift. With each step, he felt himself pulled down: bound by gravity to this fucking earth.

He started to laugh, raggedly. When he reached the engine door, his hands were shaking badly. He had to input the password sequence three times before the door opened to exhale smoke.

"Damn it, Shera. I hope this--_all of this_--is worth it," he said. Then he waded inside.


End file.
